The Length of the World
by ncfan
Summary: Arwen falls in love with the world. Modern day AU, NFAB-verse.


Canon-Arwen strikes me as the sort of person who probably doesn't do a great deal of traveling, for reasons that I've elaborated below. That might have changed after the events of _Return of the King_, considering that Aragorn probably had to travel around Gondor and Arnor as King, and that Arwen probably would have gone with him. But it occurred to me: what if she did do some traveling? That's the sort of thing that's more plausible in the NFAB-verse, so I decided to put it in here, and make it a part of Arwen's character development. Also, I've done some tweaking with Aragorn's back story (As in how old he was when his parents died, and the fact that here no secret was ever made of the fact that he was adopted). Basically, this is meant to provide some background for Arwen in the NFAB-verse, more than anything else; I like slice-of-life fics, and character pieces, so it ended up being both.

I own nothing.

* * *

She hadn't done a great deal of traveling since her mother passed over the sea to Valinor. Part of it was her father's reaction to the whole affair, and Arwen's utter lack of desire to do anything that would worry her father. Part of it was the way Elladan and Elrohir would just vanish from Rivendell for months at a time without giving any solid answer as to where they were going, how long they'd be away, and when they would be back. It used to be to go hunting Orcs, so intent were they on avenging their mother, but since there were hardly any Orcs left in Middle Earth, and most of them didn't go out pillaging caravans and taking hostages, they just had a tendency to go off for their own reasons. Again, rarely were they able to give either a clear idea of where they were going or when they would be back—to their father's eternal consternation. Elrond seemed deeply relieved that at least _one _of his children was content to stay where he could be sure she was safe.

All of that would have been on its own enough reason for Arwen to avoid traveling a great deal—the most she ever did was going to Lothlórien to visit her grandparents from time to time. On top of that, however, was the remembrance of what had happened to Celebrían. True, centuries had passed and there were few Orcs left. True, there was little danger now in traveling, with the advent of cars, unless said cars broke down on the road and you were far from any settlement. However, Arwen had lost any love of traveling she might have possessed when her brothers had brought their mother back to Rivendell bloodied and maimed and sick at heart from her time as a captive. Traveling didn't hold the same joy that it used to, not without Celebrían there beside her.

So Arwen became a homebody while her brothers became world-travelers. There simply wasn't a need to go traveling, and there was too much for her to do here at Rivendell. The centuries passed, Arwen became quite firmly entrenched in her home, and the outside world became hazy and vague, known to her only through books and paintings and, lately photographs and movies.

Then, her grandfather called and asked to speak to her on the phone. According to Celeborn, Lothlórien had just formed its own division of the Peace Corps (Apparently having their own division of the Ranger Corps wasn't enough for them). They were getting ready to go on their first trip, to the Forodwaith; it would last a few years (_Nothing Elves and Men can't handle_) and they were in need of another coordinator, as one of the coordinators had just gotten married and wanted to stay home with their new spouse. _Will you go in her place? _Celeborn had asked. _You've proven yourself a capable administrator, and we could use your assistance. Also… I think that this would be a good experience for you._

Arwen hadn't really wished to go. It was true that the passage of a few years mattered little to her, but the idea of spending even that length of time away from Rivendell seemed unattractive at best; Arwen became horribly homesick after even a week in Lothlórien, and Lothlórien was practically her second home. However, there was something in Celeborn's request that made her say 'yes' before she could stop herself, and now she was bound to her word. _I'll just make it work, _she decided to herself. _I will make the best of it. Perhaps I will enjoy myself._

"So, what do you think?"

Arwen smiled at her father, who held the six-month-old, slightly squirming Aragorn in his arms. Elrond had recently come into guardianship of a little human fosterling, and Arwen had thus recently gained a foster brother herself. The boy's father was dead, and his mother, a painfully young human woman named Gilraen, had come to Rivendell seeking help. Gilraen herself was in failing health; it was hoped that she would recover, but when Arwen looked at Gilraen, she didn't feel particularly optimistic about the human woman's chances. Gilraen had asked only for protection for her son, but Elrond had gone above and beyond her request, and gone so far as to adopt her child.

"You've already given him a nickname?" Arwen laughed and shook her head. It was sweet, more so than she'd thought she'd see from her father, though she found the choice of nickname for young Aragorn, now called Estel, rather odd. "I think, Father, that you have already come very close to losing your heart entirely to this child."

Aragorn, or Estel, squirmed again in his foster-father's arms, before finally latching on to Elrond's sleeve and giggling after the manner of infants, not that Arwen was accustomed to infants. Elrond matched the child's smile, though his was somewhat abstracted, and nodded. "Perhaps. I think you will find that there is a history of that in our line, Arwen. Have you packed warm clothes, like I told you?" he asked, business-like and crisp, not quite meeting her gaze. He wasn't entirely happy about this and they both knew it, but it was too late to turn back now. "Winters in the Forodwaith are long and harsh."

She nodded. "Yes, Father." A car horn sounded from outside. "And now I must go," Arwen remarked too-lightly, gathering up her purse and heading out the door towards Haldir's car. Thankfully her grandparents had thought to send someone who could speak Westron—there weren't a great many Elves in Lothlórien who could—to bring her over to Lothlórien. It would have been bad if the car had broken down and she was the only one who could speak the same language as the other motorists.

"Be safe." Elrond followed her out the door, coming to stand on the grass in front of the road leading out of Lothlórien, still holding Aragorn. "And if you see your brothers—" A note of exasperation tinged his voice "—tell them to come home. Or at least contact me so I'll have reassurance that they're still alive."

"Yes, Father, I will." A touch of mischief came into her smile. "I will tell them that they have a new baby brother; perhaps they will come home to Rivendell out of sheer curiosity."

Arwen slid into the passenger's seat of Haldir's only-slightly battered Oldsmobile, and waved to her father, and stared backwards on home until it passed completely out of sight.

-0-0-0-

Arwen traveled out of Lothlórien in a charter bus with nineteen other people, a mixture of Men and Elves. Among the Elves were a few natives of Lothlórien whom she recognized, but she knew none of her fellow travelers well, at least not at first. They had driven north, over the Misty Mountains that had given her mother so much grief, and come to a place where the modern technology of Men seemed to touch only sporadically. The site they came to first, a city on the ice-choked (if only in winter) Bay of Forochel, had a smattering of the benefits of modern technology, but mostly the residents of the city lived much as Arwen herself had lived centuries ago, but without the advantages of being high-born and blessed as the Firstborn are. The task of the Peace Corps workers was not to thoroughly modernize the city; no, that would be the job of the leaders of this land, if they ever chose to undertake it. Their job was to help run teach in schools and tend to the sick and injured in hospitals. Their job was to provide aid to the weary and the destitute. Their job was to give a helping hand.

It was swift and keen, or slow and dull, the way it crept up on her. Arwen was, when she wasn't helping coordinate the efforts of her coworkers, acting as an assistant in a primary school. Surrounded by a bunch of hyper-active five-year-olds, sorting out lunches and crayons and getting liberally covered in paint and stickers, Arwen had little time to think about home or the past, or to dwell on these things. Her mind was instead ever focused towards the future, towards keeping the classroom from descending into utter chaos and keeping the children happy.

She made friends with the young humans around her and came to love the little children she worked with, marveling at, and yet also grieving for how quickly they grew. Human children grew so remarkably quickly, both in body and mind; for one such as Arwen, for whom all time seemed to pass as though slowly through a screen of water, she could hardly keep up with how much these little ones could change in a year. They seemed to use up their days with the speed of a fire claiming wood, and yet their lives somehow seemed so much… richer.

Little human children could be cruel, the same way all humans could be cruel, or so Arwen could from time to time hear the more cynical of her fellow Elves claim. They hurt and picked at one another, and on more than one occasion did Arwen have to break up a fight or soothe ruffled feathers and teary faces. Then again, Arwen could remember being a child herself, could remember her brothers' early years, though they had both been grown by the time she was born, and remembered that sometimes, little Elflings could be cruel too. It just seemed to be the way of children, still struggling to get their bearings in the world and unable to restrain their barbed tongues. And as the seasons passed and Arwen watched them grow, she saw the cruel streak in many of them lessen and disappear altogether.

Arwen was surrounded with people who shone brightly like the distant stars, flickering, but still dazzling. On top of that, she was nearly overwhelmed with the newness of the places she had come to.

It did not often snow in Rivendell, and never heavily, despite its northerly location. Elrond was able to use Vilya in such a way as to prevent heavy snowfall and thus the problems that came with such a thing—he had told her that Rivendell had no need of avalanches or ice floes in the river, and that only harm and peril would come from them. Here, however, there was not the influence of a Ring and Elven magic at work, and Arwen, living as she was in rather poor housing along with the rest of the volunteers, discovered upon the coming of winter that she hadn't known just how cold the world around her could become, and how cold she could be.

The snow came down over the course of a single night, slowly at first, and then faster and faster, thick flurries and drifts until, when the morning came, there were broadcasts all over the city for the citizenry to stay at home. Arwen had gone outside, expecting to find a thin smattering of snow on the ground, maybe expecting ice on the street, only to be met with snow drifts nearly a foot deep. Her fellow Elves, who had none of the blood of Men in them, looked at the snow only with fascination, feeling none of the cold and even going out into the drifts in their bare feet, playing as though they were young Elflings again. Though Arwen did not feel the cold nearly so keenly as her human companions, she bundled up heavily before venturing outside, and had eventually had to return indoors and huddle by the fire with her human companions.

All the same, it was beautiful. Later, Arwen was to learn that this was one of the coldest winters on record for the city, and she could believe it. It was frigid, and it was beautiful, pure, unbroken white (until the residents of the city started trudging through the snow and muddied it with the sleet of the street), as soft as powder. _Up until the time when it became soggy, _Arwen recalled with a small smile. _And then everyone began to slip on it._

The weather was different here, wilder and more inclined to storm, and had a slight chill to its winds even in the height of summer. Arwen would go with the students on field trips, or go out on assignment between semesters, and she would see a countryside unlike that which she had known: rough and rocky, filled with plants she could not name, and a pale blue sky streaked with clouds. The air smelled different, that far north in the Forodwaith. Not as clean as the air of Rivendell or Lothlórien—no air could ever be so clean as the air breathed there—but crisp and scented with spruce and other northerly-growing evergreens.

Arwen had locked herself away from this world after her mother left for the West. She had shut herself away, and forgotten that which she had seen little of, and refused to lay eyes on that which she had not. The world that had brought Celebrían so much grief could not have been one worth living in, but Arwen found it not to be so. She had found it so much richer and fuller than she had left it, and this one brief taste struck a match to light a flame in her heart.

Eventually, they returned to Lothlórien. Arwen greeted her grandparents in their home, smiled with more life and warmth than she had when she had last seen them, and said nothing of the changes in her heart, nor of her desire to go out into the world again and what had happened to her in a foreign land. For that, she had no words.


End file.
